<p>i put my mac to sleep when i'm not using it. but i rarely shut it down. maybe i should? i don't know.</p>
<p>I have actually heard (from an engineer friend) that desktop computers wear out much faster if they are turned off every day. He says that the process of rebooting so often causes too much wear and tear on the system, and that large companies and school systems would save on having to replace their desktops so often by leaving them on 24/7.</p>
<p>turn your laptop off everynight. it will increase it's life by a few years actually.</p>
<p>Memie - yup, that's what they're saying.</p>
<p>Weird, my dad is an engineer, he's a strong advocate of turning off every night. It does decrease crashes, but I don't know, must be defective RAM-sucking programs like people suggested.</p>
<p>I leave my laptop on almost all the time. Seriously, I've left it on for weeks at a time. No problems in its five year run.</p>
<p>i turn my laptop off at night, just because i don't see the point of leaving it on when it's obviously not going to be used.</p>
<p>Electricity is really not the issue. Desktops can be left on for anytime.</p>
<p>If youre talking about a laptop, not all can be left on. YOu must make sure that your laptop doesnt have any overheating problem. I screwed up my last Compaq like that. I think IBMs and Apple laptops have good cooling systems and can be left on for longer times.</p>
<p>Talking about heating problems, recently, 3 dell laptops exploded.</p>
<p>YES, EXPLODED!!</p>
<p>My Dell laptop has been on for most of its 5 year life, no problems. As long as the laptop is not overheating, it's totally fine, and my fans almost never turn on. Then again, my Inspiron 8000 has an Intel Mobile Coppermine processor (Intel made their processors out of copper circa-2000 to squeeze extra clock speed out of the dated Pentium III transistor architecture, right before the advent of the new Pentium 4 architecture). So my situation is quite different from others.</p>
<p>saketm:</p>
<p>You're correct about laptops that could be left on - the key point is in the cooling. Laptops require real engineering in the area of cooling due to the heat within the small enclosed space. All laptops will generate the heat (depending on processor, speed, other chips, power supply, etc.) but the key is in vacating the heat and providing proper airflow over critical components. This is why some laptops could be left on for years with no issue and some others will have a problem is a short time if left on. Even within a particular maufacturer, it comes down to the particular model laptop. I know of large numbers of laptops that are left on 24/7 but I wouldn't recommend as a general rule that a student leave theirs on 24/7 since they could have an overheating issue.</p>
<p>on a different subject, just a fun fact:</p>
<p>if you're going to be away for up to 1/2 an hour, it is actually less costly and saves more energy to keep lights on. :)</p>
<p>Aside from electricity, the fastest way to kill your power supply fan and your hard drive is to keep it running without shutting it down periodically. Remember, hard drives are mechanisms just like any other equipment and are prone to wear and tear. Another thing to keep in mind is your fan gets louder the older it gets and it can age before its time if you leave it running.</p>
<p>A hard drive should be able to run for years while left powered on. This doesn't hurt the drive. Also, if one hears their fan making more noise than normal, i.e. bearing noise, they should try to get it fixed asap. Note that if the fan were to break while the system is left unattended for many hours, the system could die in the meantime.</p>
<p>Maybe so, but hard drives are one of the only parts within the computer that contain internal mechanisms. Because everything else is based on microprocessors they don't have much wear and tear. The platters within the hard drisk and the power supply fan are both moving parts. If something was to go it would be that.</p>
<p>If the fan were to conk out the system would shut itself down once it got to a certain temperature to protect itself from internal damage. Usuall a CPU will start to throttle at around 150 degrees Fahrenheit.</p>
<p>i'm sure someone has already said this, but turn it off when you aren't using it! it uses energy/carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming! same goes for all sorts of plugs and cables, I unplug my cell phone charger when I'm not using it now.</p>
<p>i leave my computer on all the time, and at my work we leave them on all the time too. we restart them when we have updates.</p>
<p>ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad, what can one do about wayword memory consuming applications, or to check if one has any?</p>
<p>Saluki Alex, I download ccleaner, and used it to fix "issues." I ran the cleanerd, but decided not to delete what it founded because it didn't give me the option of backing it up. Most of the stuff seemed useless, like history files to real player (and I think not the files themselves), and cookies, but some looked like they might be somewhat important, such as stuff from spybot. Could I PM you for some help?</p>
<p>I plan on leaving it on all day then turning it off at night you can never be too sure when youll need it</p>
<p>I don't know why people are getting so caught up on the whole "power supply fan" thing. Modern power supplies have huge MTBFs (>8 years). I would imagine they included all components of the power supply in that calculation. Fans will fail just as much as any other component.</p>
<p>I leave my (desktop) on 24/7, and only reboot once every few months, when I go through and clean all the dust and such out.
I wouldn't recommend doing this with a laptop, but for desktops, there is no problem with leaving it on all the time.</p>
<p>DRab:</p>
<p>One way to check (on Windows) is to use the task manager->processes to checkpoint the memory usage of an app. Checkpoint the app at various later times to see if the memory usage is incremental. It's normal for some apps to use varying amounts of memory (up/down/up/down) depending on what the app's doing but if you see it just using more and more memory over time, especially if the app isn't doing substantially more work, then the app probably has a memory leak and is basically defective. </p>
<p>The best thing to do is avoid using apps that have memory leaks if possible. If it's an app that you really need (like Acrobat for example), then keep checking with the manufacturer for updates to fix the memory leak. All memory leaks are bugs in the appllication but it's also one of the most common development bugs and it's easy to not get detected by QA departments of the manufacturers. Even major apps from major companies can have memory leaks. Smaller apps from no-name places (individuals) are even more likely to have memory leaks.</p>
<p>If an app that has a memory leak stays running (like a service or some other app loaded on boot-up), it'll eventually make the OS (Windows) unstable and then unusable without rebooting. Note - I've found that Windows XP itself is quite stable and can run continuously for months or longer without a need to reboot - it's the apps that have the problems. Of course, it'd be nice if Windows handled the wayward apps better.</p>